Jim Rankin has asked whether the contour curtain at the Roxy from Dec. ‘52 to its closing was fully functional. Well, yes, if by “functional” you mean that it rose and fell with a waterfall effect before and after each segment of the performance.
I remember that it moved at a slow, even rate but, unlike the one at RCMH, did not appear capable of being opened by only some of its cables to create different patterns. It draped in eighteen swags (four more than the fourteen at RCMH), some of unequal width as three narrow ones framed each of the sides and two extra-wide ones dominated the center.
The top valance, which shamefully covered the original Spanish retablo (you could still see some of the latter from the upper balcony), supported the curtain in an undulating design that curved in, then out, then in again, flaring outwards at each side, so that the curtain hit the stage in a wavy line.
I also temember that the curtain, lightly fringed on bottom, did not exactly touch the stage, likely because a puddling ice surface might have soaked any portions that did. As a result, during entre-acts you could see the movement of stagehands' feet behind the scant inch of exposure. The same was true of the black masking at the bottom of the screen: about ten minutes before the end of the film, you could see that stagelights had been turned on and that stagehands' feet were scurrying in preparation for the show.
Contributors to this site have rightly remarked that the Roxy was famous for allowing portions of the screen to remain dark at the beginning and ends of screenings. That’s true. The contour curtain rose and fell majestically, but the angle of projection from the upper balcony was so sharp that the moving fabric were cast deep shadows over the screen. Lavender-lit traveller curtains operated simultaneously behind the contour, but the shadows still remained.
Another problem was glare from the ice stage reflecting upon the screen; to remedy it, a sixty-foot-long rubber mat lay beneath the screen during the feature film. It disappeared before the Fox Movietone News and coming attractions which preceded the stage show. For all that, the projection and sound were flawless, with the latter better to my ears than its echoic equivalent at RCMH.
I checked the Film Daily Year Book for 1952 about the Sunset. It appears that, with the reported address of 4705 5 Avenue, the theater stood on the southeast corner of 47 Street, not on the NW corner of 55 Street as I reported above. Unless I’m just mad north-by-northwest, I still hold to my mind’s-eye image of it as a squat greystone building. And my guestimate of its size appears reasonable: FDYB reports a capacity of 564. Since FDYB discontinued listing such theaters around 1956, when the theater still appeared functional, I can’t trace the date of its closing.
FDYB lists the Park at 4322 5 Avenue (that one then definitely on the NW corner of the avenue) with a big capacity of 1,308 (never been there, never imagined that size; can only wish the neighboring comic-and-mag store such stability). And it lists the Coliseumâ€"I’d forgotten that one!â€" with a capacity of 1,102, at 5205 4 Avenue (and so blurring into my image of the Sunset as standing on 55 Street).
Here’s yet another that just occurred to me (and matter for further checking in a yet older FDYB): the Ritz (I think), beneath the Belt Pkwy on 3 Avenue in a mid-‘40s block. I recall it as a hole-in-the-wall, with a marquee designating “Top Fotoplays†but with no space for specific titles. I’ll bet that it started its life as a nickelodeon or silent-film parlor and didn’t survive much into the 1950s.
Theaterat — You’re right: the Sunset Theater stood at the southwest corner (or was it northwest corner?) of (I believe) 55 Street and 5 Ave., with its rear-exit wall on the side-street. I’d check the exact address in Film Daily Yearbook. I remember it as a low greystone building, with a blue-neon-framed art-deco-ish marquee. To judge from the size of the building, I doubt that it had a balcony. It probably sat 500 patrons. Its fare consisted of subsequent runs, and its demise might have occured in the late ‘50s or early '60s. I never entered it.
Thanks for recalling the Park. To this kid in the early '50s, the world’s most wonderful secondhand-comicbook-and-magazine store stood a few doors away. It was a terrific treat for me to go there with a few nickles and exit with an armful of vintage comics and mags, especially ones with coverage of WWII.
In the ‘50s, I saw there Alec Guinness in the wonderful “The Ladykillers” and “The Horse’s Mouth.” And I recall seeing there “Moby Dick” and “Suddenly Last Summer,” both of which had been day-dating at the Criterion. And I remember standing outside in line for “Gigi” through an entire sold-out showing after it had moved there from its reserved-seat booking at the Royale. On Sept. 25 '04 above, Warren listed four films that had played a total of 105 weeks in 1950-51. I believe that “Marty” played nearly a year there in 1955 on an exclusive run, no? After (or was it just before?) receiving its Academy Awards in March '56, “Marty” then moved to city-wide booking on the Loew’s circuit.
The lobby is truly elegant. As the theater was not open for performances during my recent visit, I could only surmise what the interior might offer. The performance schedule for April includes a dance group, a chamber concert, some classic films, folksingers, an original play, stand-up comics, and a talk by the wonderful Amy Goodman. Since the seating capacity is small, I gather that the stage must be small as well: how might it accommodate a dance group? The variety of uses from such a troup to Amy Goodman is broad indeed.
Around the corner on Bloomington’s town square is the remnant of another theater building, call the Princess Theater building, now housing commercial businesses.
Thanks to a flood in my basement over this past rainy weekend, I just opened a carton of memorabilia sealed since the 1970s. Out fell a handfull of ticket stubs, including ones from row H110-12 in the Balcony @$1.80 for the 2:00 pm Saturday matinee showing, Nov. 26 1955, of “Cinerama Holiday.” At the bottom of the drenched carton was the glossy program for the event, now spread out and drying along with dozens of co-mates across my living-room floor.
Toward the end of its life, the 58th Street offered some first-run fare. In November ‘65 I remember seeing Fellini’s “Juilet of the Spirits” in its NY premiere there. Fellini had become hugely popular in the US (“La strada” had played at Loew’s nabes in a dubbed version, and “La dolce vita” likewise at the RKO nabes), and “Juliet” marked his eagerly awaited debut in color. Still, the house was near-empty (I sat in the vast balcony, smoking cigarettes) and the lush Nino Rota score reverberated with an echo. That was a shame, because the house was stylistically perfect for the film. Fellini’s big canvas lost a lot on a small art-house screen.
“The Clod”! Great! I never heard that term! From an early age I flouted The Clod, chiefly because all the best movies got at least an “Objectionable in Part” rating, virtually a guarantee of high filmic quality. Remember the ruckus over “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Singin' in the Rain”? Both of them played at RCMH with that rating, and the nuns warned us against seeing them at grave peril to our immortal souls.
“Bewitched” was a piece of Arch Obler’s schlock, no? And it was a “sleeper” hit even yet? The penchant for biography films that summer is notable: Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Incendiary Texas Guinan, Rhapsody in Blue Gershwin, and the Great John L. Sullivan—what a passion for pre-WWII America! I wonder what might have been the competition between Phil Silvers on stage at the Roxy and on screen in “Don Juan Quilligan” at the Victoria? Today’s distributors would get all in a knot about that sort of thing, huh?
Another great photo, Gerald. I was mugged in front of this theater one afternoon in January, 1980. I’d been staying at a hotel on Jefferson Blvd at the edge of the USC campus where I’d been doing some work. One afternoon I wandered over to Vermont Ave with my camera, and was accosted there by three teenage hoodlums who wanted my camera. Like Baron Scarpia, I gestured grandly, drawing my all-weather London Fog raincoat around me (a sure sign, along with the camera, that I was an East-coast out-of-towner), and proceeded to walk rapidly toward campus. Miracolosamente, a police car appeared at the next corner, and the thugs dispersed.
As I grew up in the darker depths of NYC, attended h.s. in the middle of tough Bed-Sty, and had never come close to being mugged, I thought this incident in sunny LA marked a surprising turn of events. The tale has long since entered my repertoire of frequently recounted experiences. You’re lucky you’ve still got your camera, Gerald (or do you?).
Yes. Superbo. Mille grazie. My life-saving internet-caffe is just to the left of this theater. And to the right, barely up the via quattro fontane, and then just off to the right again on the via Rasella, is the site of the devastating raid in Rossellini’s “Open City,” no? Whether or not R shot that scene on this street (I’ve gotta check it on my VCR), the Nazis did stage a lethal raid there in ‘44. The twentieth, the most brutal of centuries.
Fotografia favolosa! Ed anche for your photos of Siena’s Cinema Alessandro, Providence’s RKO Albee, and NYC’s Beacon in previous posts. Thanks. Any more?
A third 3-D film that played at the Criterion in that summer of ‘53 was Mickey Spillane’s “I the Jury,” with Biff Eliot as Mike Hammer. My hunch is that “The French Line” did better business than either that or “Fort Ti,” since the Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the Jane Russell vehicle for suggestive costuming and situations, thereby guaranteeing enormous curiosity about the film.
The Showplace Program for 26 March ‘59 identifies the perfum for the “Old Fashioned Garden” finale as “Antilope by Parfums Weil, Paris.” The sequence was preceded by the Corps de Ballet dancing to music from Offenbach’s “La Belle Helene” and Leon Minkus’s “Don Quixote.” Credits note “Junior Fashions inspired by 'Green Mansions’ … Flowers by Modern Artificial Flowers, Inc. Radium effects by Stroblite Co. and Black Light Eastern Corp.” Whaaa? Costumes modeled on Audrey Hepburn’s spidery jungle shift? Paper-mache orchids with Parisian perfume? Radium rays that are really a show, send you out with a kind of glow? The world is a stage.
Yes, Bob— exactly. The Electra was known as “the first motion picture theater in Bay Ridge, built in 1913.” By the ‘50s, the management was so independent that it showed pictures on erratic bookings—recent product alternated with revivals and with foreign films (which few of the locals attended). I remember “Breaking Through the Sound Barrier”(David Lean’s '52 paean to modernity) and “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (with David Niven as the imposter) and “Man in the Dinghy” (everybody wondered who Liz Taylor’s new husband was, so they showed this Michael Wilding feature) and “La Ronde” (Ophuls! Ophuls! Ophuls!) (in my youth, I pronounced the title as “La ROD-ne”) showed there. It closed around '53, just before wide-screen came in.
Born in Bay Ridge in 1942, I lived there (except for some university years) until 1967. And, yes, I recall with gargantuan appetite a good deal about that neighborhood, Park Slope, the Heights, and Flatbush in those years. Especially about movie theaters therein.
The Stanley occupied the space of a present-day mini-supermarket on Fifth Ave between 74-75 Streets. Q.v. my contribution to the Stanley page on this site. Its mate, the Electra, occupied a similar space on Third Avenue and 75 Street. Q.v. the Electra page on this site.
“Sayonara” with its double-suicide (in gloomy WarnerColor no less) and its psychically tormented Marlon Brando was even more somber at Christmas ‘57. Roz Russell understandably rocked the place as “Auntie Mame” a year later.
As part of its policy for stage shows in Fall ‘49, the Strand presented “streamlined” versions of recent Braoadway musical comedies. Beginning on 30 September '49, with Gary Cooper in “Task Force” on screen, it offered “with a cast of forty” a version of “High Button Shoes,” which Phil Silvers had starred in at the Winter Garden the previous season. On 20 October '49, with Bette Davis in “Beyond the Forest” on screen, it brought in the just-closed review with another “cast of forty,” “Make Mine Manhattan.” On 10 November '49, with a young-adult Shirley Temple in “The Story of Seabiscuit” on screen, it dusted off Olson and Johnson’s review, “Laffs-a-Poppin’.”
A year earlier, the ‘42 Christmas show was the equally sombre (and equally long and equally Greer Garson-ed) “Random Harvest.” At least with “Mme Curie,” kids might be convinced that the bio was good historical medicine for them. Three rousing Christmas shows at RCMH towards the end of Cary Grant’s career were “Operation Petticoat” ('59), “Charade” ('63), and “Father Goose” ('64). “Walk, Don’t Run” might have been a good late summer film at RCMH, even though its story skirted the tsk-tsk topic of co-habitation (so did “The More the Merrier, which opened at RCMH in May twenty-two years earlier). I stand second to none in admiring Hepburn, Wyler, and O'Toole, but I thought "How to Steal a Million” quite dull. The astute author of a superb Hepburn bio mentions critics who faulted “a trite script” and “elephantine direction.” Worse than “Million,” the films preceding and following it were the silly “Glass Bottom Boat” and the slow-moving “Kaleidoscope.” Surely “Walk, Don’t Run” might have zig-zagged into RCMH instead of either.
Vincent— In 1959-60, “Mr. Lucky” provided the basis for a television series that Blake Edwards directed, starring John Vivyan, with music by Henry Mancini. When Grant’s swan-song “Walk, Don’t Run” opened at Loew’s State in August ‘66, RCMH was showing “How to Steal a Million” with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, the latter erstwhile viewed as an inheritor of Grant’s legacy and charm.
REndres— Thanks for your description of the two screening rooms. Your reference to the Rear Projection booth backstage answers my question posted on this page last 25 January about the booth’s odd extrusion into the Associated Press Building as seen in detailed floorplans of RCMH.
Memorable films from the 1970s at the Triphammer included “Darling Lili,†“2001: A Space Odyssey,†“Five Easy Pieces,†“Claire’s Knee,†“The Garden of the Finzi Continis,†“That Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,†and “10.†After its renovation as a four-plex in the late 1990s, the theater operated as part of the Hoyt’s chain that managed the blockbuster multiplexes in the crowded Pyramid Mall. Hoyt’s then used the Triphammer for sub-runs and an occasional sophisticated opener. Notable films included “L.A. Confidential,†“Pulp Fiction,†and “The Cider House Rules.â€
Notable films from the 1970s include “Jaws,†“New York, New York,†the remake of “King Kong,†and “Popeye.†Successful films after the bisection in 1981 included “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,†“Radio Days,†“Fatal Attraction,†and “Swann in Love.â€
Jim Rankin has asked whether the contour curtain at the Roxy from Dec. ‘52 to its closing was fully functional. Well, yes, if by “functional” you mean that it rose and fell with a waterfall effect before and after each segment of the performance.
I remember that it moved at a slow, even rate but, unlike the one at RCMH, did not appear capable of being opened by only some of its cables to create different patterns. It draped in eighteen swags (four more than the fourteen at RCMH), some of unequal width as three narrow ones framed each of the sides and two extra-wide ones dominated the center.
The top valance, which shamefully covered the original Spanish retablo (you could still see some of the latter from the upper balcony), supported the curtain in an undulating design that curved in, then out, then in again, flaring outwards at each side, so that the curtain hit the stage in a wavy line.
I also temember that the curtain, lightly fringed on bottom, did not exactly touch the stage, likely because a puddling ice surface might have soaked any portions that did. As a result, during entre-acts you could see the movement of stagehands' feet behind the scant inch of exposure. The same was true of the black masking at the bottom of the screen: about ten minutes before the end of the film, you could see that stagelights had been turned on and that stagehands' feet were scurrying in preparation for the show.
Contributors to this site have rightly remarked that the Roxy was famous for allowing portions of the screen to remain dark at the beginning and ends of screenings. That’s true. The contour curtain rose and fell majestically, but the angle of projection from the upper balcony was so sharp that the moving fabric were cast deep shadows over the screen. Lavender-lit traveller curtains operated simultaneously behind the contour, but the shadows still remained.
Another problem was glare from the ice stage reflecting upon the screen; to remedy it, a sixty-foot-long rubber mat lay beneath the screen during the feature film. It disappeared before the Fox Movietone News and coming attractions which preceded the stage show. For all that, the projection and sound were flawless, with the latter better to my ears than its echoic equivalent at RCMH.
Theaterat—
I checked the Film Daily Year Book for 1952 about the Sunset. It appears that, with the reported address of 4705 5 Avenue, the theater stood on the southeast corner of 47 Street, not on the NW corner of 55 Street as I reported above. Unless I’m just mad north-by-northwest, I still hold to my mind’s-eye image of it as a squat greystone building. And my guestimate of its size appears reasonable: FDYB reports a capacity of 564. Since FDYB discontinued listing such theaters around 1956, when the theater still appeared functional, I can’t trace the date of its closing.
FDYB lists the Park at 4322 5 Avenue (that one then definitely on the NW corner of the avenue) with a big capacity of 1,308 (never been there, never imagined that size; can only wish the neighboring comic-and-mag store such stability). And it lists the Coliseumâ€"I’d forgotten that one!â€" with a capacity of 1,102, at 5205 4 Avenue (and so blurring into my image of the Sunset as standing on 55 Street).
Here’s yet another that just occurred to me (and matter for further checking in a yet older FDYB): the Ritz (I think), beneath the Belt Pkwy on 3 Avenue in a mid-‘40s block. I recall it as a hole-in-the-wall, with a marquee designating “Top Fotoplays†but with no space for specific titles. I’ll bet that it started its life as a nickelodeon or silent-film parlor and didn’t survive much into the 1950s.
Theaterat — You’re right: the Sunset Theater stood at the southwest corner (or was it northwest corner?) of (I believe) 55 Street and 5 Ave., with its rear-exit wall on the side-street. I’d check the exact address in Film Daily Yearbook. I remember it as a low greystone building, with a blue-neon-framed art-deco-ish marquee. To judge from the size of the building, I doubt that it had a balcony. It probably sat 500 patrons. Its fare consisted of subsequent runs, and its demise might have occured in the late ‘50s or early '60s. I never entered it.
Thanks for recalling the Park. To this kid in the early '50s, the world’s most wonderful secondhand-comicbook-and-magazine store stood a few doors away. It was a terrific treat for me to go there with a few nickles and exit with an armful of vintage comics and mags, especially ones with coverage of WWII.
What an incredible year, that 1939!
In the ‘50s, I saw there Alec Guinness in the wonderful “The Ladykillers” and “The Horse’s Mouth.” And I recall seeing there “Moby Dick” and “Suddenly Last Summer,” both of which had been day-dating at the Criterion. And I remember standing outside in line for “Gigi” through an entire sold-out showing after it had moved there from its reserved-seat booking at the Royale. On Sept. 25 '04 above, Warren listed four films that had played a total of 105 weeks in 1950-51. I believe that “Marty” played nearly a year there in 1955 on an exclusive run, no? After (or was it just before?) receiving its Academy Awards in March '56, “Marty” then moved to city-wide booking on the Loew’s circuit.
The lobby is truly elegant. As the theater was not open for performances during my recent visit, I could only surmise what the interior might offer. The performance schedule for April includes a dance group, a chamber concert, some classic films, folksingers, an original play, stand-up comics, and a talk by the wonderful Amy Goodman. Since the seating capacity is small, I gather that the stage must be small as well: how might it accommodate a dance group? The variety of uses from such a troup to Amy Goodman is broad indeed.
Around the corner on Bloomington’s town square is the remnant of another theater building, call the Princess Theater building, now housing commercial businesses.
Thanks to a flood in my basement over this past rainy weekend, I just opened a carton of memorabilia sealed since the 1970s. Out fell a handfull of ticket stubs, including ones from row H110-12 in the Balcony @$1.80 for the 2:00 pm Saturday matinee showing, Nov. 26 1955, of “Cinerama Holiday.” At the bottom of the drenched carton was the glossy program for the event, now spread out and drying along with dozens of co-mates across my living-room floor.
Toward the end of its life, the 58th Street offered some first-run fare. In November ‘65 I remember seeing Fellini’s “Juilet of the Spirits” in its NY premiere there. Fellini had become hugely popular in the US (“La strada” had played at Loew’s nabes in a dubbed version, and “La dolce vita” likewise at the RKO nabes), and “Juliet” marked his eagerly awaited debut in color. Still, the house was near-empty (I sat in the vast balcony, smoking cigarettes) and the lush Nino Rota score reverberated with an echo. That was a shame, because the house was stylistically perfect for the film. Fellini’s big canvas lost a lot on a small art-house screen.
“The Clod”! Great! I never heard that term! From an early age I flouted The Clod, chiefly because all the best movies got at least an “Objectionable in Part” rating, virtually a guarantee of high filmic quality. Remember the ruckus over “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Singin' in the Rain”? Both of them played at RCMH with that rating, and the nuns warned us against seeing them at grave peril to our immortal souls.
“Bewitched” was a piece of Arch Obler’s schlock, no? And it was a “sleeper” hit even yet? The penchant for biography films that summer is notable: Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Incendiary Texas Guinan, Rhapsody in Blue Gershwin, and the Great John L. Sullivan—what a passion for pre-WWII America! I wonder what might have been the competition between Phil Silvers on stage at the Roxy and on screen in “Don Juan Quilligan” at the Victoria? Today’s distributors would get all in a knot about that sort of thing, huh?
Another great photo, Gerald. I was mugged in front of this theater one afternoon in January, 1980. I’d been staying at a hotel on Jefferson Blvd at the edge of the USC campus where I’d been doing some work. One afternoon I wandered over to Vermont Ave with my camera, and was accosted there by three teenage hoodlums who wanted my camera. Like Baron Scarpia, I gestured grandly, drawing my all-weather London Fog raincoat around me (a sure sign, along with the camera, that I was an East-coast out-of-towner), and proceeded to walk rapidly toward campus. Miracolosamente, a police car appeared at the next corner, and the thugs dispersed.
As I grew up in the darker depths of NYC, attended h.s. in the middle of tough Bed-Sty, and had never come close to being mugged, I thought this incident in sunny LA marked a surprising turn of events. The tale has long since entered my repertoire of frequently recounted experiences. You’re lucky you’ve still got your camera, Gerald (or do you?).
Yes. Superbo. Mille grazie. My life-saving internet-caffe is just to the left of this theater. And to the right, barely up the via quattro fontane, and then just off to the right again on the via Rasella, is the site of the devastating raid in Rossellini’s “Open City,” no? Whether or not R shot that scene on this street (I’ve gotta check it on my VCR), the Nazis did stage a lethal raid there in ‘44. The twentieth, the most brutal of centuries.
Ahh! No wonder I didn’t find it last Fall: the entrance looks unprepossessing, and vicolo is tucked away. Thanks for the photo ID.
Gerald—
Fotografia favolosa! Ed anche for your photos of Siena’s Cinema Alessandro, Providence’s RKO Albee, and NYC’s Beacon in previous posts. Thanks. Any more?
A third 3-D film that played at the Criterion in that summer of ‘53 was Mickey Spillane’s “I the Jury,” with Biff Eliot as Mike Hammer. My hunch is that “The French Line” did better business than either that or “Fort Ti,” since the Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the Jane Russell vehicle for suggestive costuming and situations, thereby guaranteeing enormous curiosity about the film.
The Showplace Program for 26 March ‘59 identifies the perfum for the “Old Fashioned Garden” finale as “Antilope by Parfums Weil, Paris.” The sequence was preceded by the Corps de Ballet dancing to music from Offenbach’s “La Belle Helene” and Leon Minkus’s “Don Quixote.” Credits note “Junior Fashions inspired by 'Green Mansions’ … Flowers by Modern Artificial Flowers, Inc. Radium effects by Stroblite Co. and Black Light Eastern Corp.” Whaaa? Costumes modeled on Audrey Hepburn’s spidery jungle shift? Paper-mache orchids with Parisian perfume? Radium rays that are really a show, send you out with a kind of glow? The world is a stage.
Yes, Bob— exactly. The Electra was known as “the first motion picture theater in Bay Ridge, built in 1913.” By the ‘50s, the management was so independent that it showed pictures on erratic bookings—recent product alternated with revivals and with foreign films (which few of the locals attended). I remember “Breaking Through the Sound Barrier”(David Lean’s '52 paean to modernity) and “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (with David Niven as the imposter) and “Man in the Dinghy” (everybody wondered who Liz Taylor’s new husband was, so they showed this Michael Wilding feature) and “La Ronde” (Ophuls! Ophuls! Ophuls!) (in my youth, I pronounced the title as “La ROD-ne”) showed there. It closed around '53, just before wide-screen came in.
Born in Bay Ridge in 1942, I lived there (except for some university years) until 1967. And, yes, I recall with gargantuan appetite a good deal about that neighborhood, Park Slope, the Heights, and Flatbush in those years. Especially about movie theaters therein.
The Stanley occupied the space of a present-day mini-supermarket on Fifth Ave between 74-75 Streets. Q.v. my contribution to the Stanley page on this site. Its mate, the Electra, occupied a similar space on Third Avenue and 75 Street. Q.v. the Electra page on this site.
“Sayonara” with its double-suicide (in gloomy WarnerColor no less) and its psychically tormented Marlon Brando was even more somber at Christmas ‘57. Roz Russell understandably rocked the place as “Auntie Mame” a year later.
As part of its policy for stage shows in Fall ‘49, the Strand presented “streamlined” versions of recent Braoadway musical comedies. Beginning on 30 September '49, with Gary Cooper in “Task Force” on screen, it offered “with a cast of forty” a version of “High Button Shoes,” which Phil Silvers had starred in at the Winter Garden the previous season. On 20 October '49, with Bette Davis in “Beyond the Forest” on screen, it brought in the just-closed review with another “cast of forty,” “Make Mine Manhattan.” On 10 November '49, with a young-adult Shirley Temple in “The Story of Seabiscuit” on screen, it dusted off Olson and Johnson’s review, “Laffs-a-Poppin’.”
A year earlier, the ‘42 Christmas show was the equally sombre (and equally long and equally Greer Garson-ed) “Random Harvest.” At least with “Mme Curie,” kids might be convinced that the bio was good historical medicine for them. Three rousing Christmas shows at RCMH towards the end of Cary Grant’s career were “Operation Petticoat” ('59), “Charade” ('63), and “Father Goose” ('64). “Walk, Don’t Run” might have been a good late summer film at RCMH, even though its story skirted the tsk-tsk topic of co-habitation (so did “The More the Merrier, which opened at RCMH in May twenty-two years earlier). I stand second to none in admiring Hepburn, Wyler, and O'Toole, but I thought "How to Steal a Million” quite dull. The astute author of a superb Hepburn bio mentions critics who faulted “a trite script” and “elephantine direction.” Worse than “Million,” the films preceding and following it were the silly “Glass Bottom Boat” and the slow-moving “Kaleidoscope.” Surely “Walk, Don’t Run” might have zig-zagged into RCMH instead of either.
Vincent— In 1959-60, “Mr. Lucky” provided the basis for a television series that Blake Edwards directed, starring John Vivyan, with music by Henry Mancini. When Grant’s swan-song “Walk, Don’t Run” opened at Loew’s State in August ‘66, RCMH was showing “How to Steal a Million” with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, the latter erstwhile viewed as an inheritor of Grant’s legacy and charm.
REndres— Thanks for your description of the two screening rooms. Your reference to the Rear Projection booth backstage answers my question posted on this page last 25 January about the booth’s odd extrusion into the Associated Press Building as seen in detailed floorplans of RCMH.
Memorable films from the 1970s at the Triphammer included “Darling Lili,†“2001: A Space Odyssey,†“Five Easy Pieces,†“Claire’s Knee,†“The Garden of the Finzi Continis,†“That Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,†and “10.†After its renovation as a four-plex in the late 1990s, the theater operated as part of the Hoyt’s chain that managed the blockbuster multiplexes in the crowded Pyramid Mall. Hoyt’s then used the Triphammer for sub-runs and an occasional sophisticated opener. Notable films included “L.A. Confidential,†“Pulp Fiction,†and “The Cider House Rules.â€
Notable films from the 1970s include “Jaws,†“New York, New York,†the remake of “King Kong,†and “Popeye.†Successful films after the bisection in 1981 included “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,†“Radio Days,†“Fatal Attraction,†and “Swann in Love.â€